Metaplace July Update
Hi everyone! It's now into July and it has been quite some time since we have provided everyone an update on Metaplace and how things are going. We apologize for the silence as of late; we're working hard on getting to the light at the end of the tunnel. The last time we gave you an overview of our development status, we were just starting our Alpha program. Now we are at the point where we are just about ready to move onto our first phase of closed beta, and we are thrilled to let in more of you. Plenty has happened since we started our first round of alpha testing, let's take a peek!
Developer Chat and Stress Tests
This year we had our first ever public developer Q&A session that was a huge success. Many of you showed up to see our team answer questions from the public and we loved the interaction with everyone. We also stress tested our space game, Uberspace, and a social chat world that allowed you to walk around as an avatar and talk with each other. These gave us an insight on our server stability and client performance and was quite useful. We hope everyone enjoyed it.
Standalone Tools
Even though we haven't released our full platform, we have been committed to developing standalone tools that you all can use to start creating art assets for your world. The first of these was the Isometric Wall Maker tool, which allows you to create your own custom walls for your world. People have made some great stuff with this tool! We've also just released the second tool, which is a Transition Tile Maker. This will create blending between two different terrain tiles. Download them and give them a try!
Reading Material
Even though we haven't been talking too much, there has been some great coverage and interviews with us this year including several interviews with Raph. Check these out:
Content Creation
We've seen some absolutely amazing work being created within Metaplace. We've had educational learning software, the start of basic RPG's, an RTS, a beginning shooter game, arcade games, word games. We've seen people make procedurally generated maps, the start of standalone clients, and then all the games we've shown in our Community Spotlight posts. We're consistently entertained by the creativity that is shown, and we are excited to see what you all can make.
There have also been tons of fabulous game ideas in our forums. If you're interested in reading about possible games that will be made in Metaplace, or to plan out YOUR game, come chat with us in our official forums.
Metachat
Earlier this year we debuted Metachat, a social chat space build in Metaplace. This was the first time a piece of our platform was launched publicly to the world, and it was a huge learning experience. Having a presence on MySpace and Facebook and being able to watch people from the different networks chat WITH each other was completely awesome. That was exactly the kind of vision we have - to bring social spaces together. We did end up removing Metachat (and you can read more details on that here) but the knowledge we gained from the experience was incredibly useful. We appreciate all the feedback and testing that you have all shared with us.
Now that we're getting closer to being able to open up Metaplace for everyone to experience, we figured we would show you our current roadmap so you all can see where we're headed. Our next plan is to head into a closed beta before broadening to an open beta. We've created a checklist of items that we feel need to be completed before opening up to the masses. Here are some of what we're currently working on to prepare for our launch:
New toolset and usability
If you follow the forums, we've mentioned a change in toolsets over the past few months. Our initial tools were done using Javascript, and we found that the browser cross-compatibility and the performance was not up to the level we desired. We have since designed and built a new set of world building tools using Flex, and they're much closer to where we want them to be. Our goal is to make a toolset that is easy to use and simple to learn, but doesn't limit the power that builders have over their creations. We're almost there, we're just hammering out usability and will appreciate lots of testing when we move on to Beta.
Security pass
We're putting last minute touches on our security to make sure we are buttoned up for launch.
Portal Cleanup
We're adding in the last few features on our Metaplace web portal and polishing everything up so that it looks fancy and is easy to use.
Marketplace
One of the more exciting pieces of our website is our Marketplace that allows you to buy and sell modules and assets to/from each other. This is a crucial part in our vision of encouraging user generated content and collaborative work. The marketplace is going to facilitate these transactions and be a searchable index of all the stylesheets and modules available to help you get started or add on to your world.
Badge System
Something we have planned for months is starting to shape up nicely, and that is our badge and achievement system. In the next few months there will be a an increase in badges you can earn while engaging yourself in the Metaplace service. Everything from visiting worlds, embedding the world on your blog, inviting friends, placing your first object in your world, etc. Collect them all! You will be able to decide which badges to display on your profile for bragging rights to your friends.
Client Optimization
We are continuously working on improving the performance of our Flash client, including latency and smoothing.
As we get closer to launch, we'll be opening up more as well. The internal Builder's Wiki will be available for everyone to view. Our current forums will be moving onto our actual Metaplace portal and Metaplace.com will be changing to reflect our service going live. We have plans to show you all an overview of the tools so that you have an idea of what is possible. We're also going to be jumpstarting an initiative to provide more consistent development news to you all, including a biweekly update that will keep everyone informed and on top of the latest Metaplace releases and changes. We know everyone is excited to hear more and to get your hands on Metaplace. We are close!
As a company, we've grown immensely over the last year since we have started this blog and website. It was only 10 months ago that we unveiled what we are making to the public, and in that time our team has grown from a size of 10 to 25. Although our number has changed, it hasn't changed what we feel is a core value behind our company - and that is that we stay 100% committed to our vision. We have always wanted to bring virtual spaces to the masses, to make it just as easy to embed a social place or game into your website as it is to embed a video or music clip. We've wanted to provide tools and resources for a wide range of skill levels to MAKE those worlds and games as well. We want to see a community of users who collaborate, share, and communicate to make what they see in their minds a reality. We want a brand new user to be able to create a virtual world and customize it how they'd like, and advanced users to be able to script their own games from scratch and even develop their own add-on tools and clients. And most importantly, we want everything to be open and client-agnostic. We want to set virtual worlds free and make them as common to see on the web as a JPG or MP3. Our goals are lofty, but they haven't changed. Every employee in our company (from our office manager who keeps us stocked with coffee to our programmers who make everything work behind the scenes) is passionate about and devoted to this vision and just as excited about Metaplace as you are. That's what makes us so eager to provide something tangible for you all.
The vision hasn't changed and neither have the goals for you, the end-user. We know that you will want to be able to create whatever you desire, and having the choice to use and iterate upon building blocks provided for you or start from scratch. Right now we're building base art assets that everyone can use - starting with social worlds and moving to fantasy. We're also creating base level systems like grouping and mission systems that you can plug right into your world. You'll want to interact with others, which is why we're focused on a central chat system that allows you to communicate with people cross-world. For those who want to explore we'll have an index of potential worlds to check out, sorted by ratings and tags so you'll be able to find worlds that interest you. There will be plenty to do - everything from a stream of events to stay on top of what your friends and others are doing on Metaplace, to a badge system allowing you to earn and collect, to a marketplace giving you a space to buy and sell. We're still committed to making Metaplace a fun experience for creators and players alike and bringing the two together, even welding them together into one!
So there you have it! We're getting closer and closer to the finish line andwe're glad that some of you have followed us so closely over the last year. Wehave plans to open up another sign up for beta for those of you who missed thechance last Fall and we'll be having more frequent posts here that keep you informed and updated on our progress. We'll talk to you soon (and moreoften)!
Tami "Cuppycake" Baribeau
Community Manager
